digitaldivas

I just had this little discussion with a surfer I caught giving away my shit for free.

XXXXXXX: Hi, I got your email and I will pull the link immediately. I can't believe that many people still pay for porn, when there is so much out there for free. Everything you want, from every source you want. And part of the problem is this whole "recurring membership" scam. Or, at least that is what it feels like. I am interested in seeing some of your content, and I'd be willing to maybe pay a little if the quality of what you are offering is especially good. So why do I have to give you my credit card info, and sign up for essentially a long term arrangement with you? We all remember the horror stories of trying to cancel these things and not being able to - or not reading the fine print to see that if you don't cancel by 11:59 of a certain day that you are paying for another month anyway. Webmasters love hooking people on these recurring memberships in the hopes that you forget about it, and they can keep charging you and charging you. For what? Some porn, or some pictures of feet? No thanks.

One site I know of had a 4 day membership for around $12, and it was nonrecurring. In fact, you didn't even need a credit card (you could pay by phone or checking acct). I liked that, so I joined a few times over the year to check out what was new. But only when I wanted to, and felt like there was some value in what I was buying.

Most foot fetish sites, especially the big ones, don't even care if I post passes on pornbb. They are all rich and driving lambos.


Digitaldivas: Do you think that women just call us everyday and offer to get naked on camera for free? Why the fuck should I be giving you free shit when every shoot I do costs me 300-600 bucks?!? I'm not attacking you man, but that is just stupid. And you wonder why sites keep closing and closing. Maybe in 2-3 years when you have nothing new to jerk off to, you will "get it".

XSells are what your talking about and I agree that it's one of the things that have put the online adult industry in a rut. I was a surfer before I was a webmaster and I got fucked over too. Had to even change a credit card number once, ridiculous! CCBill, does not do that. Nor do other merchant vendors. That ended for the most part 2-3 years ago. I know of many, many people that run indexes and directories and we won't even deal with sites that do that shit.

As far as recurring, if you dig it, why not if they are updating on a regular basis. I would say that 60-70 percent of fetish sites are run out of the webmasters home. You figure in the costs to host, edit, shoot, post produce and book the model and what your really doing for the mom and pop sites are supporting them. Sometimes, it means making that car payment, not having to pawn shit for a shoot. Digging them, supporting them and allowing them to grow to continue to produce stuff that you love and cum all over yourself too. I just don't know how that is "fucking you over" nor do i understand this "self entitlement" bullshit that you "derserve" to get all of our shit for free. Torrents, passcrack sites and copyright infringment is stealing, end of story.

Sometimes, I will even join some of my sponsors that have awesome stuff, I don't really surf the member area, maybe for a couple of promo pics, but you will never know how much some of these good hearted people that do these sites appreciate the suppport and the money to continue to do what they do.

Why even call this a "community" when people have mindsets like that. I see it from both sides. People emailing me to put them on footpervert.com so that they can make the rent. wanting a spot on Digitaldivas so they can feed their kids. Sorry, but stupid shit like this really pisses me off. Most webmasters, especially niche webmasters are paycheck to paycheck at the most.

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Vendzilla

This guy wants you to reinvent the wheel

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think about that

MovieMaster

Right on!

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digitaldivas

it's true though, thats the sad part man. i'm on my community boards everyday, just chilling with the foot, pantyhose and nylon crowd. Niche is much more "community" oriented. Maybe thats why the "slap on the face" stings that much more...

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digitaldivas

And i do feel sorry for the mom and pops that are like, "do i eat, or do i shoot"? " do I pawn my fucking tv so i can get this update"? ...I think all subversive photographers have had to mull this once or twice. ...And I think in that time, you decide whether this is the game for you or not.

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Jim_Gunn

Might be a good idea to highlight your policy of no added charges (cross-sales) and offer more payment options to surfers with this attitude including 1 month non-recurring, 3 month (discounted) non-recurring and possibly sell individual clips and pay-per-minute and offer check and phone transactions too. Might take the wind out of this guy's sails and turn him back into a paying customer.

digitaldivas

Oh I do all of it, except for the pay per minute. The scary thing is that I think that 90 percent of everyone's traffic that is reading me has, or is adopting this mindset. they don't feel bad or have any conception of how much producing adult costs, he actually, in his own little way, was justifying posting passes to a crack board. That is what is really scary imho, that is what really has to change.

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Agent 488

"rich and driving lambos." cool.

Shoplifter

I'll have to look into this foot fetish thing.

WarChild

Sounds like a webmaster talking to me... Any chance you just made this up? Just sayin'

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Robbie

The first thing you should do is get some password protection on that site so that they can't post up passwords. I use phantomfrog.com and it stops that shit dead cold.

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digitaldivas

unfortunately, no
http://www.wusfeetlinks.com/ubb/ulti...1;t=012587;p=2

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spazlabz

no, you handled it the best way you could and you were spot on

macker

There is a lesson to be learned in what he's said tho for sure.

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will76

the guy is right though. recurring membership sales do exist to try to get as much money out of the members as possible and hope that people forget. companies (not just porn) thrive on getting people in to paying for something or even giving it to them for free, as long as there is recurring charges. Hell direct tv just got me with that shit, gave me 3 months free for Showtime I didn't want it but he said it was free so like an idiot (like most people) i said ok. So of course idiot me forgets to cancel and see i've been paying a couple months for it. It happens all the time.

With regards to porn sites (pics and videos) he is right even more. A customer sign ups for 1 month and gets access to everything you produced since day one, thousands and thousands of videos. So that is a good deal for the price. So the next month, you expect him to pay same price $30+ for those hand full of new updates you will make that month. What is the value in that? Everything he liked he could have downloaded it already as well so he doesn't need to pay to keep seeing it. The only thing new he is getting for his $30 in month two are those updates you made (most sites don't make many if any). Lets see, his first month $30 for 10,000 new videos (to him). Month two $30 for 20 new videos. Not to mention he is also right about all of this porn being out there for free and easy to find so you have to more than ever give them value they can't get someone else for free if you expect them to join much less rebill each month.


to the question... Did the OP over react ???

I think you handled it a little over the top. You look like you took offense and was very defensive to someone who is willing to pay and is giving you a lot of honest feedback. Even if it wasn't what you wanted to hear. Not to mention he is right about everything he is saying. I didn't see where he was asking for everything for free stuff. He said he would pay to access your site but he didn't like recurring memberships and he stated he has signed up to other sites before. Granted I would be pissed too if I caught him sharing my shit for free though.

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digitaldivas

Yeah Will, that was the jist of it man, feeling violated at that. And PornBB is a busy friggin board... I don't disagree, I do agree with what the surfer is saying, but I won't pull my recurring options because of that. I do update and people can still feel a connection with a concept. The recurring is there for them. I think most of my peers would agree with this.

However, if some of the top dogs would clean up and take the lead and be MORE PROACTIVE with passes and shit, would sites like pornbb really have any fuel to exist?!?
Other than the .rar sharing that they do?

I don't know, our industry is so fucked up! How long, we as an industry will continue to pay for our sins of the past and fucking over faceless surfers that have ALL revolted en masse? I don't know. People talk about ideas here but until we can cohesively implement them, I don't know. I can only police my content and continue to know my traffic and know my surfer. And chastise them when they do stupid blatant shit like posting passwords...

But it is sad that the little guy now is more proactive than the multimillion dollar porn houses. Just fucking sad imho. We should be looking up to them, not frantically putting out fires that they do not give a shit about anymore...

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will76

Hell no, i wouldn't remove recurring either. Recurring is what is keeping a lot of pic and video sites still in business these days. Likely 95% of their revenue is from recurring and 5% new sales if that. And in most cases i bet it is people who have been rebilling for a long time. I bet they could look at their logs and see all of the people paying each month that havent logged in for months.

I don't buy that "rebilling" is a convenience. I think people who say that re kidding themselves or if they really believe it they are in denial. There are ways to allow them to renew each month without them doing anything extra and not being charged if they stop logging in. It is what it is, rebilling is a tactic to get more money out of them, in particular the people who forget to cancel or that we make it too hard to cancel (mainly done in the past).

of course i would still use recurring memberships, i am not stupid. but i think it is smart to see the reality and understand the surfer's point of view. In the past they had to sign up to a site and enter in their cc info to see the full length videos and "good stuff". 99% of the sites out there only offered recurring memberships so the surfer had no choice to sign up to see full length porn even though they hated recurring memberships and potential nightmares from it . Now with free full length porn from people's members area every where, they aren't forced to "take a chance" with recurring membership to see the good stuff and either forget to cancel or not find out how. They are pushed more and more to going to tube sites where it is easy to search and browse, it loads fast, the video quality is good, no credit card or recurring concerns, no downloading (virus) concerns, and best of all its free.

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CYF

he has a point here.

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digitaldivas

Will I am not arguing with you man. All points valid. It would take some pro action from the industry as a whole to change this. Unfortunately, in the end, we are left to fend for ourselves. And that is sad. That was my point.

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carzygirls

I think BF wrote that to push your buttons... just saying...

Notice the flawless reference to webmasters... surfurs don't know webmasters, they know fuck me, why do I have to pay for my internet AND a fucking site. Bullshit!!

digitaldivas

lol, Carzy that would be crazy man

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will76

i'm not arguing with you either, just posting my general thoughts on the topic. Not to you specific.

I do think there are things you can change yourself to help fix it and it doesn't have to be something the whole industry needs to get behind.

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digitaldivas

The industry should get behind being proactive with password sharing, policing their traffic sources. It will help all of our bottom lines in the end.

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ottopottomouse

Not just me then.

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Paul Markham

I also think it's a webmaster talking.

However. We all know why recurring billing happened. It happened to pay for traffic and now as someone said it keeps some alive. Given the option members will opt for a non recurring time after time or cancel as soon as they join. They learned by experience. We taught them.

Most sites aren't worth a recurring membership. Will used the example of 10,000 videos. What about the sites with 100 videos all the same? The industry killed a great way to make main niche sites more attractive to recurring billing. Non exclusive content of semi exclusive. But it didn't fit the model of Affiliates submitting galleries to TGP sites.

But what if shooters good enough could sell a solo girl scene for $100 10 times. It encourages more better shooters to shoot more better scenes. Getting shooters to shoot 5 scenes for $1,500 was the model. Result was low quality work and 1 scene for $300 instead of 3. Doesn't have to be all non exclusive or semi. Mix it in with exclusive and give that to affiliates.

As I said it doesn't fit the affiliates needs. Like recurring billing fits the affiliates needs so did content production.

Today the cat is out of the bag. The damage is done and giving out free content everywhere is the model.

Changing the billing method might over time bring some back. Changing the pricing structure might bring some back. But the immediate effect will be a loss of a lot of money which will send most bankrupt. They can't afford to wait for the business to turn around.

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Oracle Porn

no one is pawning anything to update their sites, you can all relax, the lambos story is closer to the truth then pawning tv's to make an update.

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SwirlsGirl

I like the part about, whiny customer not having any thing new to jerk off to in a few years, then and only then will the leeches understand

Agent 488

foot fetish guys driving lambos and sites pawning off shit to pay for a site update. not sure if serious.

Sly

Your response to him indicates that you think the customer actually cares about what it costs to run a business. They don't. Expecting them to do so is kind of naïve. A customer doesn't care what you pay to produce content, what you pay for processing, what you pay for hosting, whether or not you can pay your rent... they just don't. A customer cares about what they have to pay and what they get in return, that's about it.

I enjoyed his comments about the nonrecurring model, how he thought that was an attractive model and something he is interested in. I have seen this from many members myself so it does appeal to some people. Nothing wrong with offering different join models if it gets people to sign up.

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minicivan

The vast majority of people in this biz have always celebrated with great pride, their adversarial relationship with their own customers and continually beam with pride as they put their general lack of understanding of what it means to provide a product or service to a customer on display.

I remember in the early days, all you ever heard was "surfers are stupid". Well, today they are experienced, savvy and well aware of schemes, scams, fraud and shortcomings of paysites as well as the options out there to find what they want and they know how to find it. Funny how so many just don't get that.

Nautilus

Use MD5 encryption for passwords in your database - that way even if they find a backdoor to your site, all stolen passwords will be useless.

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Paul Markham

Quoted for the truth.

The reality is the people buying often if not very often know more about the product than those in the business.

Marketing guru Damianj thinks a designer can turn bad content into good content. Like the customer doesn't know the difference and can be swayed by the design of a site.

PR_Glen thinks people who know nothing about a product or even like it can make sales. Maybe that why they have so many different niches under their banner.

"It's an impulse buy." Like the customer is going to get swayed by the first pretty face he sees. More like the affiliates will.

"Digital made it easy to shoot porn." As if getting a picture in focus and exposed properly was rocket science.

Not to mention all the tricks like "Hide the cancel button." and cross sales.

We are where we are today because of the ship we built. But let's blame it on Tubes rather than think.

</rant>

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Amputate Your Head

interesting read.

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tony286

Those things do suck but its the excuse that makes them feel better about taking it. Lets see photoshop is too expensive, the movie and music industry are money hungry etc etc. All music sucks and they want me to pay for it. I could go on and on.
Are there douchebags in our industry? fuck yeah but its just the excuse to justify taking.

pornguy

Honestly Will I am surprised you said this. Note that it is the only thing I am commenting on from your post.

If those rebills don't come in most the the companies would be out of business before they started. I burned more than 10,000 gigs last month in bandwidth. that's expensive even with the amazing deal I have. Yes new sales more than covered it but this is a BUSINESS..

Do you get up set with Gillette selling you new blades to shave with? No you dont. Maybe they should have only sold you one and that should stay sharp for ever. then they would be out of business.

This is business and business means making money. If they Want the product and they want updates then they have to pay for it.

Do I agree that some of the Price points out there are insane? Yes I do.

I Disagree with Xsales and such. But its a way of making more so that the sites can continue to grow which is what the customers DEMAND! ( yes I know some dont use that to grow. ) Let it stagnate and they only pay 1 time and then it all falls apart. There are only so many porn surfers out there.

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will76

Your analogy would be better like this: I buy a new razor and 10,000 blades for $30 next month you want me to pay $30 for 20 new blades.

So you think someone paying $30 for to see 10,000 videos is just as good of deal as someone paying $30 the next month for 20 new videos ?

So you burned 10,000 gigs last month, that means nothing to this convo. How much of that bandwidth was from advertising???? If you want to factor in BW costs into justification for charging the same prices each additional month you need to break it down per member. I doubt a member who paid $30 in month two with you spent more than a couple cents in BW. bw is so freaking cheap these days.


What i am saying though is your "updates" aren't worth the same price as access to your entire library was that they got on day one.

Think of it like this. If you join netflix and they let you watch as many videos as you want in the first month, so you browse all 10,000 of them and pick out the top 500 you liked and watched them, and then you download all of those you liked the best. You paid $30 for that. It was a great deal, you had a huge selection of movies you have never seen before, you got to watch tons of them and saved the ones you wanted. So then Month 2 comes and they want to charge you another $30 but now you will get to see 20 new movies for your 30 dollars... the deal sucks. they already got access to everything you had, saved the good stuff and did it for a great bargin price. Most people, especially in today's environment isn't going to rebill on purpose just to see a couple new updates. But see in the analogy above Netflix never has that problem as they only let you rent so many at a time. On a porn site someone could go through porn clips fst and often and literally browse everything you have ( that they like) with in the first month.

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digitaldivas

not serious, this niche is 99 percent labor of love.

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digitaldivas

I could not agree more

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digitaldivas

Will, no one is arguing this point on the recurring thing. It is a fact that surfers, savvy as they are now, are much less likely to reccur and come back every couple of months to get the "bang for their buck" This is fact. I have 40-50 members who do exactly that. I will see their emails like clockwork every 4-6 months.

I would like to think that the ones that ARE reccuring are just supporting the site, love the content or a mixture of both. It is true that niche tend to support their "community" much more than the average surfer that is signing up for huge megasites with access to 5 billion more when they sign on as a member.

Foot, PH and Nylon surfers are also much more likely to promote mom and pops than huge porn houses. Which, quite frankly is saving the ass of fetish niche right now imho...

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Paul Markham

Actually this couldn't be more wrong.

Tubes update far more than paysites and don't charge a bean. The reason they don't charge is they don't pay out half their turn over in traffic generation. And that's the real reason so few sites update well.

By the time all the other bills are paid the money left for the product isn't enough.

What a business plan. Give affiliates 50%, 60% or more for the big guys. Then give them every tool they ask for, give them support and hosting as well. Then spend money looking for new ones. Pay all the other bills and what's left?

Enough to get some guy to shoot 5 solo girl scenes in a day for $1500. Who only does it because he can't sell a single set for $1500. Let alone $3,000.

But as has been pointed out I'm clueless and know nothing. Plus any dumb fuck can shoot for magazines.

The only thing this industry worried about until the last 2 years was affiliates and getting traffic at any cost. Then sponsors and fast profits. Members and updates came behind them.

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Paul Markham

There's another form of recurring this industry never got. The recurring where the customer kept buying porn from the Internet.

We were so focused on what we needed we didn't realise that even if he left 1 site he would soon join another and the whole market was a merry go round of customers.

Until a guy gets pissed off with buying porn on the Internet. He keeps buying porn on the Internet.

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digitaldivas

Well that is why I can't even understand the whole xsell thing. The customer would be so pissed that he or she would never sign up again. Imho, the business model for xsells was snag them once, just once and fuck them out of 1-200 bucks, rinse repeat. Not a long term plan by any stretch of the imagination...

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BV

I traded my Lambo in years ago.

GregE

Yeah, me too.

But having to part with the private jet as well???

That is gonna be a really tough adjustment

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Paul Markham

It was ran and supported by a lot of people who could only see as far as the end of their noses. They had no concept of how the porn business works or the customer. All they knew was how to put up a site, execute a rip off and drive traffic.

Remember for every site with xsales there was 100s of affiliates going for the quick buck.

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Nautilus

Surfers who subscribe regularly know they can cancel anytime themselves at CCBill, so whether it is recurring or non recurring join option is not all that important. If it's CCBill they're not afraid of xsales or rebills scam - probably the same is true for several other well established online processing companies.

We tried adding a non-recurring monthly option, and it didn't make any difference ratio wise. I've heard that arguement many times before that surfers are afraid or rebills scam or do not want long term commitments, so we tried adding a non recurring option to see if there's going to be any increase in signups from those surfers who're "afraid" of rebills. Didn't happen. No increase at all.

Your surfer is just making up excuses for him stealing and not paying and that's it. He knows damn well your sites are CCBill that and you cannot pull any rebill or xsales scam on him, and that he can cancel anytime at CCBill without ever contacting you.

Rebills are not a problem. At least for CCBill sites, they aren't. Those who do not want to rebill can cancel anytime and there's 100% guarantee that no charges will be made after cancellation. Surfers are well aware of this.

But piracy IS the problem. Whatever you try on your join page, it doesn't make any difference as long as your stuff can be downloaded free from pornbb or pornhub. Cheaper prices, higher prices, recurring, non-recurring, special offers etc - whatever you try is going to have a limited effect at best, as long as surfers can google "yoursitename rapidshare" and get a wealth or links. But being proactive about piracy and removing your stuff from infringing sites DOES directly affect your bottomline.

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2MuchMark

DigitalDivas, you blew a big opportunity with this customer.

This guy is GOLD for any webmaster who wants to improve his website. Why? Because he's Savvy. He knows where to get free content, he's paid for porn in the past, he's been burned and has little to no trust in the system, and yet he's still willing to talk to you.

Look at him as the ultimate sales challenge. If you can sell him a membership, you can sell anyone.

Instead of giving him a hard time, what you should have done was listen (read) what he had to say, and then ask him point-blank, "What do I need to do to earn your business?"

You night think at first that his answer might be "Nothing, you'll never earn my business", but in reality, consumers just want value for the money and to know they are making a safe purchase. There's alot of sites with hidden cross sales and hard-to-cancel recurring memberships out there so its no surprise that he doesn't trust adult sites much anymore. Listen to his concerns and see what you can learn from them to apply to your site.

Very often site owers get too wound up in their own sites and businesses to see things from a fresh outside perspective. Get this guy on the phone and spend 30 minutes with him and I bet you learn alot.

Good luck!

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digitaldivas

I see your point, I just get sick of serving dmca notices.

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